Zeitgeist by Bruce Sterling Read Free Book Online Page A

his way through the party toward Liam’s mixing station.
    Starlitz plowed through a crowd of young, sweating, half-deafened Cypriots. These kids had the dazed, rootless, half-breed, malleable look of core G-7 fans. Half the population of Turkish Cyprus lived in London. The children of exile had one leg perched on each island; they were teenagers who were uniformly surly and unhappy anywhere in the world. The little hybrid kids were bopping like maniacs, gamely struggling to follow a global beat.
    Liam the G-7 Soundman lurked in the shadows behind his massive blinking stacks and keyboards. Liam was a fat, balding musician in a backward baseball cap and a dashiki, with a Players A smoldering in his yellowed fangs.
    Starlitz picked up a padded headphone-and-mike rig and plugged in to Liam’s system, so that they could talk inside the almighty din.
    “How’s the new hardware, Liam?”
    Liam turned and grinned at him. “Can’t you feel that, man?” Liam patted his bulky gut, which was visibly shaking with the bass track.
    “I’m tone deaf,” Starlitz reminded him. “Tell me about the vacuum tubes.”
    Liam flicked switches and turned down their headphone treble to a muted squeak. “Legs, for two years I’ve been limpin' along with friggin’ Mullards and Tung-Sols! I’ll never use that shit again! Listen to the rich, brilliant spank off these Russki missile tubes! They got big fat midrange furriness, and a big girthy magic down in the low ends!” Liam knocked the side of his skull with his nicotine-stained knuckles. “The top end still sounds a bit thin, but that’s because they haven’t burnt in proper yet!”
    “So the tubes are okay?”
    “They’re brill!” Liam gurgled. “I put one tube up for auction, on-line. Just to see what the pros would do for it, eh? Latest bid is five thousand!”
    Starlitz raised his thick brows. “Five thousand bucks for a friggin’ vacuum tube? Jesus, I’m in the wrong business.”
    Liam grinned hugely. “Five thousand
pounds
, boss! Yankees don’t know from tubes!”
    Starlitz offered a hearty thumbs-up. He plugged out, submerging himself in the racket again. Liam was useful. Liam was predictable. Once upon a time Liam had toured four continents, lugging his guitar as a Tantric monk of British psychedelic blues. But Liam had survived the sixties; Liam was past the fame, long past the groupies, he had even survived the awesome Niagara of drugs and booze. Liam had fully recovered from rock ‘n’ roll, except for one fatal addiction: his equipment jones. Being a career musician, Liam didn’t require a salary, a roof, dental care, or health insurance. But he couldn’t face himself without an exclusive kit.
    Liam owned a lacquered 1957 hollow-bodied Gibson in an exclusive run of twenty-five. He had bass strings made in total darkness by blind Portuguese gypsies. He owned Turkish cymbals made in a five-thousand-year-old Bronze Age foundry. Liam’s G-7 road kit included a cherry Roland 303, a vintage Mellotron, even an Optigan. Liam was getting his own way in the service of G-7. Liam was the picture of fulfillment.
    The time had come for a check on the girls. Leggy did not deal with the G-7 girls personally. He recognized this as unprofessional. For the artistes “Leggy the G-7 Manager” had to be a remote, mystifying figure, a creature of high-level deals and cryptic Masonic handshakes. Leggy would look in on the girls periodically, to distribute knickknacks and petty cash. He left the day-to-day discipline to the middle layer of G-7 management: the G-7 voice coach, the two G-7 choreographers, and especially the group’s chaperone.
    Tamara the G-7 Chaperone had joined the team from Los Angeles. She had skills and a personal background that were hard to match. Tamara had first become an Angeleno way back in 1990, after fleeing in abject terror from Soviet Azerbaijan, where the collapse of her husband’s Communist regime had made her a nonperson. A courageous emigrant in